Never Ending Finality
by nebulia
Summary: Alternate ending to The Great Gatsby. For a school project. Please tell me what you think.


A/N: This is a school project, due tomorrow, and I thought I'd post it and see if anyone responds. It had to have an interesting twist in it, but it had to retain thestyle of the book and keep Nick's feelings the same. I have just finished it, and I'd like to know what people think anyway. Enjoy! Also, I don't own Nick, Daisy, several of these phrases used in this, the West Egg, the Finnish woman, etc. They belong to the Estate of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Also, this doesn't quite retain the style of Fitzgerald's work. I write in a little more detatched style, and I couldn't quite get out of that habit, but I tried. Sorry.

This is in place of what happens after the last big paragraph break that begins with, "Gatsby's house was still empty when I left…"

**Never-ending Finality**

An alternate ending to _The Great Gatsby_

By nebulia

It was the day I was to leave, and the house was still empty. The grass was as long as mine; nothing had been touched.

I had only a few bits and pieces to pack up, before I was ready to leave—things like the fan in the corner, and the only chair I owned in the place. For some reason, still unexplainable to me, I didn't wish to leave this place, I didn't wish to leave Gatsby's home, and I simply didn't want to finish packing. So I watched his house.

Of course, nothing happened. But as I watched, I saw the one taxi which always slowed to point out the house stop. And, oddly enough, someone got out.

I recognized the woman's gait almost instantly, and jumped up from the chair, running out the door.

"Daisy!"

She turned. "Nick? Oh, Nick dear," she cried, in what seemed to be an attempt to be gay, but only sounded like a sob, "How _have_ you been?" She kissed my cheeks fondly.

"Fine. Why didn't you go to Gatsby's funeral?"

Daisy's face crumpled suddenly. "Oh, Nick…" She turned and ran into Gatsby's house, stopping only to unlock the door.

_I didn't realize he'd given her a key…_I thought, before I realized that she was in Gatsby's house and I didn't know what she would do. I rushed in after her.

It took me several minutes of searching before I found her.

"Daisy?"

"In here, Nick."

She was standing in a room I'd been in once or twice. It was full of war memorabilia, from Gatsby's uniform to the medals of honor he'd received to pictures. But Daisy was holding a revolver that had been his. His name was even engraved on the side: _Jay Gatsby, Seventh Infantry_. She held a bullet in her hand, and she loaded it slightly uneasily.

"Where'd you learn to load a gun?" I asked.

"Tom taught me."

I looked at her, and then at the gun held uncomfortably in her delicate hand. She looked—odd, in her flowing white dress and large hat, with tears leaking slowly down her face and the gun in her hand.

"Nick?"

I looked back in her eyes, which seemed tortured. "What?"

"You'll be my witness, won't you?"

"Witness in what?"

She turned out and faced the window, which, I realized, had a clear view of her dock across the courtesy bay, and consequently, a flashing green light just barely visible in the fading light—not quite sunset, but not bright out, either.

"I'm going to shoot myself, Nick."

I looked at her, at her fingers tight around the handle of the revolver, at the determination in her eyes. And suddenly, it registered.

_"What?"_

"I'm going to shoot myself. Right now. And I want you to be my witness, to give them the note." She held out a piece of paper, pressing it into my hand.

"But…why?"

"It's Tom, and Gatsby, and—oh, Nick I'm tired of it all, and I'm not going to stand for it anymore!"

I was shocked. Daisy didn't seem the type to—kill herself. She had a family, she had friends, she had Tom, she had Gatsby—Daisy could've had anything she wanted, I realized. Anything. She was rich, she was still young, she was beautiful—she could've had everything. And she was choosing to end it.

"Daisy," I cried, rather desperately, "You can't!"

She rolled her eyes at me, a shadow of her old self. "Oh, Nick," she said, "I must." She nodded resolutely, looking out at the light again. "It has to be this way." Her eyes flicked back to me, and she said, "You can't dissuade me. I've been thinking about it since the night I—since the night that woman was killed, and I've come to a decision. Will you be my witness?"

I gave up arguing with her. For some reason, that I still quite can't explain, I gave up reasoning with her, even though this had been, when I had followed her in here, my worst fear. Maybe I had expected it all along. I met Daisy's eyes, and nodded.

She placed the gun to her head, her fingers steady and calm, her entire being calmer, stiller than I'd ever seen it. She cocked the hammer, and I closed my eyes.

I heard the shot—it seemed to echo throughout the colossal, empty house with a resonance that seemed final. So many deaths had happened here, so many lives torn apart.

I turned away before I opened my eyes. I didn't want to see her body, or her blood, or that damned green light again. The green light had represented an orgiastic future to Gatsby, but a hopeless ending to Daisy.

I dropped the note on the table in the room. I left the house. I called the police, and then I left the little bungalow and the old Finnish woman and the huge mansion and the West Egg, never to return.

For I see this _was_ a story of the West, after all—Tom and Daisy, and Jordan, and Gatsby and I—we _were_ all Westerners, we _were _deficient in the ways of the East. We tried to adapt, all of us, and we failed, some of us dying, some of us cheating, some of us just watching, just waiting. Maybe we should've just stayed where we were, and the future we hoped for—the future Gatsby hoped for, that, I think, we all hope for in a way, might've happened.

And yet, if Gatsby had not been killed, he would've reached out to his dreams, even as they faded from his grasp, and, finally, one morning he would fall. But there would always be another dream, another person, another green light—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.


End file.
